In Galciv1 you basically built the same batch of improvements in the same order on every planet. The sliders were how you could influence your social/military/research balance on a galactic level.

In Galciv2 we got the ability to place buildings on planet squares. This let us choose our sliders (through the factory/lab decision) on a planetary level rather than a galactic level.

The Galciv1 slider controls were left in Galciv2. When you have both, especially in their current form, they just don't integrate well together. What we end up with is two sets of slider controls. The Galciv1 slider controls are simply more powerful than the Galciv2 slider controls (the buildings). This is what makes 100% factories or labs strategies optimal.

Feel free to disagree.

Ok. A beginners perspective on the matter.

When I first started playing (8 games ago), I fiddled with sliders, mostly having social around 20-30% and the rest split between military and research as needed. I though I understood the system, and I do.

Then I read about 'all factory' and such strategies. My first thought was: That can't possibly work.

Then I tried it.

*Heiliges Kanonenrohr*

The industrial output you can achive is just... just... *gestures wildly and starts to hyperventilate* obscene!

Now, this was only my ninth game, so I played on subnormal, but I am convinced that I would have won just as easily several difficulties higher, given that particular galaxy setup.

To all of you who just dismiss this strategy: Try it first. It sounds easy, just 'build factories all over the place and you win'. It isn't. Even on such a low difficulty, I found it hard to get the economy going, you still have to keep the people happy while generating enough taxes to burn in your furnaces. And just when you think you got it figured out, along comes 'enhanced factories' and suddenly you have a hole the size of the galactic core in your wallet.

On the other hand, it is just insane fun to point at your shiny new ship design, click on the governors tab, say 'make it so' and two turns later the galaxy is swarming with spaceships.

So, in conclusion: It's not an exploit IMO. It's how the slider system works, it's a lot of WORK, actually, and just a different style of play. Playing with 'normal' worlds comes easier, requires less micromanagement and planning ahead. In my opinion, the 'all factory / labs' strategy is harder to make it work, so that balances off nicely with the immense potential.

Wyndstar, I like your response.

Maximizing precious tiles is a bit tough. I've considered whether taking a social production bonus or a research bonus is most appropriate for factory-only. One clearly creates more results, but the limits of focused-research are where I normally fall behind. Taking it to extremes, I can get about a +50% bonus to research, which may be what is needed to not only progress smoothly through techs, but also takes some of the load off the economy. Do you have any ideas or strategies for increasing research to remain competitive? I can only think of abilities, mining a research resource, or just stealing tech through conquest/spys. Against a higher AI, it's hard to keep tech levels high without tech trading.

With an all factory approach there are a few things you can do:
1) Number of worlds. If you start to conquer early, the sheer number of planets (and therefore tiles) you bring under your control can make up for any shortfall. In addition, if you are conquering a lot early you will steal a good number of techs. All factory strategies research at a crawl when you have 2-20 worlds. When you have 100+, it is a breeze.

2) Go with research bonus +20%, tech party +20%, and then early go for a few other key techs and wonders. Planetary improvements give you a +10% research. Sensors III (quick to research) gives you a wonder that adds another +10%. Go Altarians for another +25%. Already I have no research resources but am closing in on +100%. Add in one resource or a few anomaly boosts, and you are there.

3) Going all factories means lots of production capacity... so you should have some worlds that you can dedicate to kicking out constructors. For me, I try to use my lowest level worlds because they still manage a constructor per turn. Then, economy starbase spam. Many people consider this a cheese approach, however.

4) Flip early. And I mean real early. Start off rush buying 2-3 labs and set research to 100%. Get about 10-15 key techs over the next 5-12 turns. By mid March/early April, build over everything with all factories and never look back. This little early kickstart can actually pay huge dividends. It works best if you go for sensor/factory/economy/diplo techs. I know that probably sounds like all of them But seriously. I might start a game going planetary improvements >> sensors III >> impulse drive >> xeno economics >> xeno factory >> trade, then build my econ capital and switch over to all factories. I left out all of the sub steps, but in theory you should be researching several techs per turn anyway. With just that as a basis you will have a basic boost to your economy, diplomacy, research, and colony/anomoly rush, and the factories you do build are going to be the ones you want to stick with for a long time. I mean really, once you have those out of the way, what is the tech you really NEED early game? It doesn't matter what you go for after that with your pathetic factory based research, you can start to build your infrastructure.

Just some ideas, anyway.
- Wyndstar

If you're going with an all-factories build, instead of using ability points on research, why not focus them on diplomacy or even use the Super Diplomat super ability? Well-played, and with a bit of luck, you might be able to have an all-factory build with most abilities in production and economics and use diplomacy to keep up in the tech race. You'll probably always be behind by a little bit, but the extra production should give you the ability to throw out enough just-barely-obsolete ships if necessary.

I haven't checked, but is the economy starbase research boost applicable to focused research? If it is, then you can turn off production on worlds surrounded by starbases (to save money if need be) and get the massive research bonus which actually turns them into decent research worlds. That would definitely compensate for the overall lack of research. If using research abilities (or innate race research bonus) then the early game 100% research blitz (which I hadn't thought about) would sustain you until you've built up an infrastructure - it's an excellent strategy.

I'm certainly no expert in those strategies yet, but I've played 1 game with the all-lab approach at crippling level and while it was somewhat tough at the start (not being able to build planetary improvements and ships quickly) it was in the end a real pushover.
Once I had 2 large ships built I basically controlled the whole (medium) galaxy with them.
But it was no fun, the needed micromanagement and the 8esp. in the beginning) permanent need to sell techs took way too much time.

Now I just started a game with all-factories and while I just have passed the first few months it's probably the best start I ever had.
This is mainly helped by choosing the Thalan. I play them for the first time and it's my first game at Maso, but their ability to build factories so extremly fast (a factory costs 96+6x5=126bc) combined with their racial production bonus - and even more from the extra points from the party-bonus and some from the ability points - pumps out some incredible production early on - and at least so far, allows me to keep somewhat up with research compared to the AIs. Gonna se how it turns out, but with the amount of worlds I managed to grab I can't imagine the AIs will really be able to beat me - unless it should act surpringly more intelligent than in my games at crippling.

But the Thalans ability to build up a world completly in like 10-15 turns (every turn you can build 1 factory + buy one cheaply) should be pretty unmatched.

This said, it's probably perfect in a setting with "abundant" (habitable) planets, in a surrounding where you an colonizy only 2 or 3 other worlds it will probably not be able to shine.

But so far I think this could really be fun to play a game at "low tech" instead of owning literaly a hunded enemy ships with a single (almost) invincible ship.

As an additional positive effect for me in this setting: since you don't want labs anyway, you can choose evil and have those nice weapons.
I'd wager that if I manage to research the Psyonic Beam (or maybe Psyonic Missile if I see I run into a too big tech gap too fast) before the AIs overrun me, I should be pretty much settled.

Anyway, so far Thalan + all-factory-approach seems to be a real winner.

Also the focus mechanic needs to be changed in some way, IMO it is nearly breaking this game completely.

I agree that the mechanic is broken in the sense that it causes there to be essentially just two production strategies that dominate all other strategies, where previously there were many more. On the other hand, I have to concede that these two strategies are at least interesting to execute. One reason is that their rigidity amplifies the "planning ahead" component of the game, which you correctly identify as an important element. "Fixing" the production model too well, "squishing" the peaks of the strategy space, may actually make the game less interesting as a whole despite increasing diversity of viable strategies; a nearly flat space is more dull than one with some high peaks.

I used to be totally in favor of modifying the focus mechanic to just act like a localized change in spending ratios. I still think there should be a change, because two is a really small number that decreases the game's replay value. But tweaking the game mechanics so that there are just a few more interesting peaks, without doing much to nerf the existing exploits, seems like it would deliver more entertainment value than squishing everything.

Micromanagement is bad:

Okay, I do agree with this. (Even if I may be one of the most fanatical micromanagers in the universe, heh.) Anything that (i) the player frequently wants to do, and (ii) the AI can be fairly easily programmed to do, should not take many clicks to do.

Regarding the election exploit, all you have to do is make morale move toward its target value over time, rather than instantly (like 5%/week). One exception: it would always move instantly to at least 20% if its target is higher to avoid population death.

I find very large block quotes counter-productive. I'm responding to Reply #39 by Becephalus.

1.
Well, you need to understand that the game has gone through a LOT of revisions to get to this point, and it wasn't always so. Morale buildings, for instance, are still useful in all versions of DL, but with a change in morale penalties for higher populations in DA they were moved out of ever being useful. If you are building them to breed faster, you do better with fertility clinics. If you are building them to raise taxes, you do better with stock markets.

But morale buildings didn't always have decreasing effectiveness with population size. A lot of the things you don't like are the result of Stardock "squishing" our options to "nerf" "exploits". People used to build worlds with 100billion populations. Stardock decided they didn't like that. In DA, Stardock decided that they wanted everyone to have populations in a 6b to 13b range, with sharply diminishing returns on populations over 13b, to the point where populations over 18b are actually counterproductive to your empire. However, they still have a +300% food tile, which was great back when you could have 100 billion populations.

I'd rather not have as many stock markets as I do, but in making the game harder, Stardock also decided to tighten up money making. This does make the game more difficult, and you just eventually realize that it leaves few strategy options. Trade was killed in the money it gives you, but the cost of freighters didn't change. What changed was the time it took to see a return on investment, a change to the point where they pretty much precluded trade from being a meaningful money making strategy for any game shorter than 3 years.

"squishing" down the strategy space has been exactly the problem. They have squished it so far that we are down to just two strategies. IF trade was worth more again, than maybe you could build less stock markets. IF populations could be higher again, you would be able to have higher pop worlds and suddenly you might have a need for morale buildings and food distribution centers. Etc. etc.

Through revisions and "nerfing" strategies, stardock has funneled the game into having only one "most efficient" approach. Now you want them to apply yet another "nerf"?? The exact opposite is needed if you want to promote diversity of gameplay.

Mind you, I'm not asking they make the game easier. I already play on the top difficulty level, and honestly I wish there were even higher ones available. But you seem to think that making the game harder increases variety. Over playing this game for a year, I have to disagree. I find that every time they make the game harder, a player's realistic options for victory are reduced.

2.
And you do have to plan ahead. The economy in this game moves like a slug at this point. You need to know where you are going to be at way ahead of time. Sure, you can rush buy a building or two or a ship or two, but you can't rush buy technology. Rush buying has the effect of speeding up a few strategy choices... it does NOT patch poor planning. What you are seeing with these planet building strategies (all of one type of production building, 1 farm, nothing else but banks) actually IS the result of planning ahead. I know the problems I'm going to run into, and have developed a strategy that avoids them.

3.
I agree micromanagement is bad.
However, I disagree with a lot of the rest. Is it realistic that tax rates change near an election? Have you never experienced a change in basic goods/gas prices/interest rates in the weeks and months close to an election, only to quickly change thereafter? It happens all the time. Is the current voting system exploitable? Very. Should it be changed? I think so.
But what happens if you can REALLY only change taxes 1% per turn? One, more people will just use imperial governments and ignore elections. Improved governments have had their bonuses scaled back many times already. What would end up happening is that rather than the current diversity where players decide what tax rate works for them and adjust based on galaxy circumstances (diversity in play styles is as good a thing as no micro management) - players (like me) would end up coming up with specific patterns that always worked best. We could do this because choice had been removed. You would end up with people complaining that how come in turns 1-40 you always left at a 29%,and then in turns 40-50 you always increased to 39%, and then in turns 50-70 you always stayed there, and then turns 70-90 you always increased to 59%, etc. The answer would be that because Stardock removed choice, it became easier to get a handle on all the variables and come up with a "most efficient" strategy for all game environments.

Summary.
I disagree that focus is breaking the game completely. In fact, I strongly disagree with most of your conclusions. Do I wish some things were balanced differently? You bet I do. I would love to be able to just talk with Brad for a few hours about what specific balance changes I would make and why. Of course he would have the ultimate executive decisions over changes... but why am I so special that I would get to do that? You think there wouldn't be players who disagreed with the game balance choices I made? I think a lot of the problems are unintended consequences. Changes made to fix exploits in the 1.2 patch of DL are ending up having a drastic effect on DA 1.6, because of the ripple effect changes have in this system.
Honestly, I think Stardock has gone too far in restricting choice. Iztok was the first person who really started to convince me that a steady stream of game balance revisions was funneling the game into just a few playstyles. Now this is what we have. I still love this game tremendously. I would still tweak a bunch.

You can always adopt an artificial set of rules to make the game harder. I have done this in the past, often just to see if I could do it. Try playing a game where you NEVER research even a single tech. Ever. You can still beat the game, but boy is it hard. There is also a lot less choice. The last thing this game needs is even less choice. It has thrived due to its many options and trying to let players play the game their own way.

- Wyndstar

Wyndstar

Honestly, not to be a jerk, but that just sounds like a story of them not knowing what they are doing/having a plan balance wise. I am one of the main multiplayer developers/balancers for a fairly popular online game. It is both easier and simpler than it seems I suppose...

I know the game has gone through a lot of revisions, I have been playing it since GC. I just never got invovled on the forums much, as with no multiplayer there was no reason to communicate, but lately at work there is nothing to do but sit and read all day, so I have lots of time to think and post.

Morale buildings, for instance, are still useful in all versions of DL, but with a change in morale penalties for higher populations in DA they were moved out of ever being useful. If you are building them to breed faster, you do better with fertility clinics. If you are building them to raise taxes, you do better with stock markets.

It should be fairly strightforward to fix this curve. Take a a few samples from games in early mid and late stages, see what the expected benefit of the different buildings are. Adjust the curve.

To start just make them say 15% more effective (not 15% in game terms, 15% over current level). If that doesn't help do it again. Incremental change is the way to balance competing objects like structures. You subtley improve the underbuilt ones, and degrade the over built ones until they all have the intended frequency. Big changes are bad cause you reach whole new equilibria environments and ruin all the previous work (which seems like what recently happened here?).

A lot of the things you don't like are the result of Stardock "squishing" our options to "nerf" "exploits"...

..."squishing" down the strategy space has been exactly the problem. They have squished it so far that we are down to just two strategies...

No alot of things I don't like come from poorly thought out game design (I mean this is the broadest sense), or perhaps poor implementation of "balancing". Don't get me wrong I do not want to sound all negative, this is a wonderful game, hell if it was not wonderful I would not care what it was like I would just sink the copious hours in takes into somethign else. The production values are excellent, the content is great, the frequency of patches is admirable. The overall concept, while not original is very well executed.

As for the squashing of solutions, that is exactly what should happen. Ideally you want ZERO dominant solutions, or even remotely dominant ones. You want to play to have to make clever tech choices, building choices, and ship tactics based on the situation. Not follow some cookie cutter solution that dominates for 90% of settings. In life there are no ideal solutions in an environment like this, or at least no even remotely computable ones. Its not even good if there are 3 or 4 solutions. To use a starcraft analogy a version where carrier spam and battlecruiser spam work isn't any more "balanced" than a game where just one of them works, spamming anything shouldn't work and is as sign the games abtraction is breaking down.

Ideally to win you should have to use all the all or at least most of the features in the game. Otherwise what is the point of them? I think there is a tendancy for people in games to view these cookie cutter solutions as "strategies". I mean really what is the point even? It would be like playing Halflife with a walkthrough right next to you. Not that I am directing any of this at the players, by all means be should try to find solutions to the game, but the goal of the designers should be that there are none. The only solution what anyone in real life would do making your many decisions better than your opponents. Finding holes in game mechanics is definitely an admirable skill, but repeatedly making use of them isn't strategic, it is the antithesis of strategy. It turns the game into the same difficulty as an MMORPG, and the only way to compensate is to make the AI have insane bonii across the board.

Now you want them to apply yet another "nerf"?? The exact opposite is needed if you want to promote diversity of gameplay.

That comment doesn't even make sense...see above...

Mind you, I'm not asking they make the game easier. I already play on the top difficulty level, and honestly I wish there were even higher ones available. But you seem to think that making the game harder increases variety. Over playing this game for a year, I have to disagree. I find that every time they make the game harder, a player's realistic options for victory are reduced.

I don't want the game harder in the sense you do. I don't want yet higher AI bonii. It is much easier to balance, more realistic, and players would have a better time, if they had less power/control (they will hate giving it up at first, I can already see you would). This would allow them to play a challenging game with fewer AI bonuses. In your sense the game would be easier. Strictly speaking there is no way those highest levels should be beatable if the game was functioning properly. Ideally you would want the AI to have the exact same settings as a human, but given the state of AI currently that is not really possibly. But very few games having settings quite this insane, and it is because the solution maxima are too high. this allows you to beat the game on extremely rediculous settings, but only if you follow fairly strictly determined approach.

Notice that I said my house rules allow me to play two levels lower and still have a challenging game. An Intelligent or Genius AI can actually keep up with me because I have fewer tools for runnign my empire. Moreover if I want 10 ships today, I cannot just materialize them out of thin air, I am just screwed.

Moreover I am not talking about nerfing anything, mainly just two main things I'll summarize again below:

What you are seeing with these planet building strategies (all of one type of production building, 1 farm, nothing else but banks) actually IS the result of planning ahead. I know the problems I'm going to run into, and have developed a strategy that avoids them.

This isn't planning it is reading from a script. There are very very few choices involved. Planning in a strategic sence involves makign choices. This is what I noticed as I kept moving up in difficulty, basically my every move was already decided, what fun is that? So I decided o adopt house rules and go back to the lower levels, rather than going up levels and not being able to make choices.

I agree micromanagement is bad.
However, I disagree with a lot of the rest. Is it realistic that tax rates change near an election? Have you never experienced a change in basic goods/gas prices/interest rates in the weeks and months close to an election, only to quickly change thereafter?

Actually no I haven't, there is almsot no evidence this happens in the U.S., and the reaosn it doesn't is that it doesn't work that well. Moreover regardless of whether it works in real life or not it is horrible game design. Anything that encourages players to game th system, and micro thigns is bad.

Is the current voting system exploitable? Very. Should it be changed? I think so. But what happens if you can REALLY only change taxes 1% per turn? One, more people will just use imperial governments and ignore elections.

So what were you disagreeing about? As for your second point then you just make the morale penalties a bit lower or the bonuses a bit stronger.

Summary.
Iztok was the first person who really started to convince me that a steady stream of game balance revisions was funneling the game into just a few playstyles. Now this is what we have. I still love this game tremendously. I would still tweak a bunch.

I think one way to read this is that they having been quashing maxima and just haven't quite finsihed yet, in which cae they are doing a god job. Hopefully the highest levels will soon be unbeatable, which I think is as it should be. As for focus, try playing without it, I swear the game is more fun. You have a lot less power. If you want something expensive built you have to put it on a high production planet.

There is also a lot less choice. The last thing this game needs is even less choice. It has thrived due to its many options and trying to let players play the game their own way.

We agree completely on this, what maks you think I want less choice? A player can have more realistic choices and less power at the same time. Right now for optimum play there is really a single choice.

Anyway I'll try to restate what I said in a more clear fashion.

1: Increase the importance of underused content.

Underproduced structures (farms, influence, morale) as well as underused ship components and abilities. This will make the game involve choices. Without choices you have all the strategy of performing a piece of music, yes you need to know how to do it, but if you know how than there is nothing to it other than execution. Execution is not strategy.

2: Reduce the power of the tools avaible to the player.

Change or eliminate the focus mechanic, what is it supposed to be doing exactly anyway? Right now it is killing the building balance. Perhaps a better way to work it, if people msut simply have it would be to allow each planet to focus on one area and it would increase that production by 25% or maybe 33% (you would have to pay for the increased spending of course). That way you would need some actual production in that area for it to matter. This would kill 100% factories in one feel swoop and change little else about the game.

Change the way taxes work so the player cannot game them.

Change the way spending works so you have three independant sliders and no overall slider. This way they do not cannibalize each other production. Ideally you would also only want these to be only able to be changed slowly. This will prevent micromanagement and gaminess.

Fewer player management tools equals harder games and less micro, and more realism/ diversity in strategy.

Hi!

Since I'm "challenged" I'll put together my view.


IMO the keyword here is multiplayer . You don't need to reprogram your customers each time you do changes to the game mechanics. Stardock on the opposite has to do that, and since there's only ONE developer for the AI, there's no possibility for him to do all work needed. Especially because the AI is already at 80+% of it's capability, and you probably know that for each percent of improvement over such a large number there's a disproportionally larger work needed, on asympthotic scale (e.g. moving form 80% to 85% needs 50% more of work already done, moving form 98% to 99% needs 10000...% more work).

What would be my suggestions to increase diversity:
1) Drop the victory scoring, and the Metaverse. It's IMO the prime source of the grievance. Players see their score, start comparing, and start ranting. To please them, developers start nerfing. Players adjust, and rant again, and developers nerf more. A downward spiral, that only shrinks the game diversity.

2) Drop most nerfs and caps the game has. Let players play the way they want. 100B planets with some patience, 5000000..... BCs in treasury, 50 planets for peace... To h... with balancing! Who will complan when there's no score to beat? Just plethora of different strategies, and they ALL work. If not on suicidal, then on some lower level. And players will have fun exploring them all, and that's IMO the only thing that counts.

My 2 cents.

BR, Iztok

That seems like a good solution. Or, have there be more or stricter penalties for lower levels of morale. That in itself would help make morale buildings worth something again.




You don't remember the election last fall (US)? What happened to gas prices? Why does the legislative process tend to change quite a bit the few months before legislative elections? No need to go on about this, it's just that I can't believe you could have lived in the US and not have noticed this happening.

The extreme shifts which are possible in the game, though, don't happen in real life. I hardly think Bush would be re-elected in 2008 if gas prices fell a couple of dollars the week before the election! But maybe I'm just underestimating the stupidity of the American people.